The new wave of modern technological global mass
communications very efficiently propagates a culture of homogenous thinking and emotion.
The media, especially the print and electronic media, feed our desire for sensational
negative reporting. On March 21, 1997, the CNN (Cable News Network) web page reported
that, "Many Americans view the media as vultures feeding upon tragedy and scandal,
but most are drawn to sensational reports despite themselves, a new poll indicates."
Isn't it amazing, but not surprising, that The National Enquirer, a supermarket
tabloid, is America's largest circulation newspaper?

A persistent diet of news based upon tragedy,
scandal, greed and negativism makes it much too easy for us to fall into a sense of
despair. The Intermediate, Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 Edition
(indexed Jan 9 1997) defines one who is in despair as: to be hopeless; to have no hope; to
give up all hope or expectation.

Hope is the opposite of despair and is: a desire of
some good, accompanied with an expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is
obtainable; an expectation of something which is thought to be desirable; confidence;
pleasing expectancy.

The rock band My Despair, describes despair
as an introspective void. Without anything to look forward to, without even a smidgen of
internal strength that possibly could be summoned, emptiness may consume us. Conversely,
in our desire to see a light at the end of a tunnel, a belief that hope is always possible
and just around the corner, we become vulnerable to the quick fix, the prankster, and
those who would use us for their own purposes. People too easily adopt paradigms that do
them, their friends, and far too often, their followers, harm under the sincere acceptance
that the adopted path to the future is true and hopeful.

Hope Disguised

As I write this issue, word has come out of Rancho
Sante Fe, California that thirty-nine members of the group known as Higher Source
have committed mass suicide. A few days prior to this event, five members of a group
calling itself the Order of the Solar Temple were found in Quebec having committed
suicide. To date, over seventy members of the Solar Temple have taken their lives.

Many members of Higher Source were between
the ages of 18 and 24, not exactly what one might consider despairing due to ill health. I
visited Heaven's Gate, the Higher Source's homepage and found the group's
message, which according to their logic, was a sign of hope. Their message of
"joy" read:

Whether Hale-Bopp has a 'companion' or not is
irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us
at Heaven's Gate. The joy is that our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above
Human (the 'Kingdom of Heaven') has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the
'marker' we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the
Level Above Human to take us home to 'Their World' -- in the literal Heavens. Our 22 years
of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion -- 'graduation' from the
Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave 'this world' and go with Ti's
crew.

If you study the material on this website you will
hopefully understand our joy and what our purpose here on Earth has been. You may even
find your "boarding pass" to leave with us during this brief "window."

As the story of the Higher Source spread, the
nation sought information on, analyzed, and came to dozens of explanations and conclusions
as to what happened and why. Referring to the suicides President Bill Clinton said,
"Some Americans feel isolated from all of the rest of us in other ways ... with truly
tragic consequences."

Isolated self-centered groups-foster
disconnectedness and separation. They posses an air of false hopelessness which is a
disguise for the isolation itself. A close friend sent me an E-mail which said,

I understand the need for motifs and myths, but
understanding is the end of it for me. It's a good short story, isn't it? What we can
convince ourselves of through hope...My agnostic denial is not egoistic enough to assure
myself that any Force really cares about us, let alone arranges fairy stories like
television dramas.

Perhaps, when closely scrutinized, we may find out
that through one individual's despair, the acceptance of "motifs and myths"
masquerading as hope, coincident with personal charisma and psychological attractiveness,
create expectation mythos making perfect sense to those embroiled within it.

Hope Institutions

Consider the most sacred holy day in Christendom -
Easter (which is today). Easter is a celebration of Jesus' resurrection after his death by
crucifixion. Pope John Paul II's Easter message was, ""Christ is the hope of
those who see life and the future threatened by war and hatred, especially in the heart of
Africa." The ultimate hope of Christians, however, is that upon their death, they
will be saved through Christ as they join in the kingdom of God in Heaven. I find
similarities between the salvation message of Heaven's Gate and that of the
Catholic Church.. Yet, one is called a cult while the other a religion. What is the
difference?

I remember as a child attending mass at Saint
Anthony Catholic Church in Jersey City, NJ. There, all around me, were paintings on the
ceilings of Jesus and the Saints standing on clouds in the heavens with a look that I can
only describe as compassionate and merciful - offering hope. If we replace the cloud with
a comet and Jesus or the Saints with a UFO, does the message change? In either scenario,
the implication is, "You can be saved through me."

One definition of religion is "strictness of
fidelity in conforming to any practice, as if it were an enjoined rule of conduct."
Cult is defined to be, "A system of religious belief and worship." While we may
not sympathize with nor relate to the group, The Higher Source, the search for and
their attempt at reaching the light at the end of the tunnel has close parallels to the
belief systems of most established religions including Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.
It is my contention that religions and cults differ in numbers only. Cults become
religions when their membership is of sufficient size that they can no longer be ignored.
This allows them the luxury of acceptance by virtue of their implanted unmistakable
presence.

What of It?

What then is one to make of a large group of people
who commit suicide in order to pursue their hope journey? Far be it for me to judge
one way or another. That being said, I believe that true hope is life-affirming.
While Christianity might foster a life better than this one after death, it does not hasten
the transition from this world to the next. On the contrary, it teaches that life can be
better now through prayer, forgiveness, good deeds, etc. Thus, it is life
affirming.

Hope which is based upon life denial (which suicide
is), while being completely successful in terminating one's problems in the moment, does
not offer a better way for the being's present existence. It terminates the problem as
well as the solution seeker and with it the potential discoverer of the solution. But, the
Higher Source folks did not see their action as suicide. They saw it as vacating
their "vehicles." While suicide is usually meant to kill the person - the
individual, these folks intended to continue as separate entities (in a "higher
plane", "evolved" of course).

On the journey of life, all of us are seekers. Some
of us are more in-depth seekers than others. All of us, however, aspire to some level of
existence that is better than what we perceive to have now. We have hope that tomorrow
will be better. Perhaps this is a mistake. Might it not serve us better to change our mind
in hopeful attainment of a level of consciousness; one that recognizes the ever present
now moment to be the de facto eternity within which we recognize that all is well?

A few days ago, I received a bank statement in the
mail which upset me. I called the local branch of the bank only to be routed to another
state where "all the records are kept" and then back again to be put on hold to
repeat the process over again. Finally, I found myself on hold using an old cordless
telephone which was on its last legs crackling and hissing in my ear just begging to be
thrown out. After breaking the phone by slamming it back into the cradle, I took the phone
off its hinge and threw it into the trash. Yet, in the moment, at any given instant
throughout the entire event all was reasonably well with the world. Why do simple events
caused by human or machine error sometimes plunge us into despair? I believe the answer to
be that our humanness makes us forgetful. Another way of putting it is that we become
mindless from time to time.

Let us examine some of what people hope for. They
hope for bills to go away or be paid, the end of the work day, good health, more money,
better relationships, less weight, more weight, nice clothes, tomorrow, yesterday, a new
car, less suffering, etc. Tim Dunn, in his book How to Escape the Chinese Finger Trap:
A Manual for Changing writes:

Buddha said, life is suffering. In the end, all
attempts to escape the fact that life contains suffering are doomed. A gloomy philosophy,
you say? Not entirely bleak, I would respond. Because, THERE IS AN EXIT. Don't try to
escape it. Go towards it. Seek out what hurts and frightens you... It is mindlessly
pulling away from pain and mindlessly seeking pleasure that causes people to greatly
increase the troubles that life brings them.

Dunn suggests that hope lies not in escape or
avoidance bur rather from embracing the suffering, heading towards it making the suffering
less of a stranglehold on our happiness. Describing psychotherapy patients who embrace the
suffering Dunn writes, "When they do this, they relax the weave of the trap which
they have built for themselves, and they can begin to escape it." Our hope might be
to replace running away from our suffering to heading towards it. The title of Dunn's book
How to Escape the Chinese Finger Trap: A Manual for Changing refers to a
cylindrical woven straw tube into which a finger of each hand can be placed. The Chinese
finger trap is a metaphor for moving toward suffering in order to lessen it. When we place
our fingers in the trap, our fingers are trapped. The harder we pull our fingers apart,
the tighter the grip. Our hope of escape through pulling apart is erroneous and
counterproductive as to do so only tightens the trap. Changing our thinking by moving our
fingers toward each other in the direction of the trap loosens the grip and allows for
escape. Perhaps it is not a loss of hope that dejects us but rather a fundamental flaw in
the where, what and how we embrace hope.

Signs of Hope

While the media makes headlines with the
sensational, there are those who embrace suffering and quietly in their own way become
hopeful, often in quite tragic circumstances. As an example:

The last six months have brought breakthroughs with
the introduction of drug treatments that now offer the best hope of keeping AIDS patients
alive since the killer disease first made its appearance 15 years ago. Nobody can call
AIDS an inevitably fatal, incurable disease anymore,'' Peter Piot, head of the United
Nations AIDS program, said Sunday in an address opening the conference. ``We have not got
a cure yet, but the new combinations of anti-retroviral drugs are holding out new hope.'

Imagine those who have had full blown AIDS believing
that there is no cure and death is ahead. Hopefulness does not come from running away from
the disease bur rather heading towards it and responding accordingly.

I can, with little effort, recall memories of a
major depression over half a decade ago. I fully understand what it means to be without
hope. Yet, in the middle of despair, I recall reading everything I could get my hands on
which dealt with suffering and pain. I read all of Gerald Jampolsky and Diane Cirincione's
books. I read A Course in Miracles, The Handbook to Higher Consciousness, The Bible, books
on Zen, Taoism, healing the inner child, toxic shame, Shambala warriorship, The
Peaceful Warrior, etc. When I did not move toward my depression, it moved toward me.
Throughout it all, I recognized that there existed within me a small spark acknowledging
that help might be found somewhere, somehow. That spark was what we all need when immersed
in what appears to be overwhelming despair. It is our willingness to find it that is the
first step in it finding us.

The Warrior View

Chogyam Trungpa, in his book, Shambala, The
Sacred Path of the Warrior presents another view. Trungpa believes that our desire to
be hopeful leads to the ambush of hope. He believes that wanting hope is
self-defeating. In Chant and Be Happy, the teachings of A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada state,

The mind is always concocting objects of happiness.
I am always thinking, 'This will make me happy,' or 'That will make me happy. Happiness is
here. Happiness is there.' It is as though we are riding on a chariot behind an unbridled
horse. We have no power over where we are going but can only sit in horror and watch
helplessly.

Trungpa believes that we become Shambala Warriors
who conquer negativity and self-doubt and in the process achieve the happiness and wisdom
necessary to overcome the setbacks and crises in our lives. Trungpa encourages us to
become warriors of the outrageous. By this he does not mean that we are to become
disrespectful or intolerable. Rather, we become warriors of the outrageous when we go
beyond fear and overcome hope. What Trungpa means is that our suffering comes from
our insistence at being hopeful followed by the disappointment of not reaching that
goal. Wanting to have hope can set us up for failure. Failure occurs when hope is
not fulfilled.

As a warrior of the outrageous we have "nothing
to hope for and nothing to fear." Trungpa further goes on to say, "The way to
despotism lies in clinging to concepts, without access to a pure realm in which hope and
fear are unknown."

Our discussion of the warrior view can be summarized
in the writings of Ken Keyes, who views all suffering as a result of addictions which have
not been and cannot be satisfied. The search for happiness is such an addiction.
"This is perhaps the heaviest conditioning we have submitted to in our lives, and the
one with the most grievous consequences." Trungpa and Swami Prabhupada see a desire
for hope as being another such addiction. It might be helpful to view happiness and
hopefulness in light of Krishnamurti's response to a school boy who asked him if he was
happy. Krishnamurti without hesitation answered, "I don't know. I haven't thought
about it. But if I begin to think about it I'll definitely feel unhappy." Carlos G.
Valles writes, "Blessed be the person who has not stopped to think whether he is
happy or unhappy, and to whom the question has not even occurred." If we freely
interchange the words hopeful and happy in the preceding quote, we may then express what
personal freedom is.

Final Words

Earlier in this newsletter under the section False
Hope, I wrote about the suicides of the groups calling themselves Higher Source, and
the Order of the Solar Temple. Offering hope to their followers, these groups are not
alone in leading them to their death through the promise of and belief in a better world somewhere
else. A similar event took place in Jonestown, Guyana where thousands of people moved
on to a better place through drinking a kool aid - cyanide concoction. Was it hope
that lead these people to take their own lives? Or, was it despair over not having their
hopes fulfilled in the promised land of a cult religious figure who had his own hopes
unfulfilled? Who can say? What can be said, however, is that the answers and the power
lies within.

We can confidently conclude that the answers lie
within us and with a bit of searching and practice we will find the truth (small
"t") that is meaningful for us at any given moment, crisis or life situation.

As long as we are alive, learning and teaching will
take place. We need merely to listen and we will hear what we need to know. A Course in
Miracles teaches that when we need to learn the lesson will take place and that when
we are ready to learn the teacher will appear. We are our own best teacher.

He only can behold with unaffrighted eyesThe horrors of the deep and terrors of the skies;Thus scorning all the care that fate or fortune brings,He makes the heaven his book, his wisdom heavenlythings;Good thoughts his only friends, his wealth a well-spentage,The earth his sober inn and quiet pilgrimage.

Sir Francis Bacon

Whenever I despair I remember that all through history that truth
and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers. For a time they can seem
invincible but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.

Ghandi

There is more than anger, there is more than
sadness, more than terror.There is hope."

L. Davis & E. Bass, from their book,The Courage
to Heal

We can hang our heads and moan and weep or, like
Paul and Silas, we can turn our deep, dark, dank dungeon into a platform of prayer and
praise.

Joe Lamuscio

All that we have in the here and now is our love for
each other, our willingness to forgive one another and our willingness to come to each
other's rescue.